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Tuesday, July 23, 2013

What is the Failsafe Diet?

I currently owe my life to this diet. Seriously. I've tried just about every diet there is out there, and not one of them made a difference. In fact, most of them made me exponentially worse! About 2 months ago, I was starving and wasting away. I was unable to put one thing in my mouth without some sort of horrific full body meltdown. It was then that I stumbled upon the Failsafe diet and decided to give it a go, being that I didn't have much left to lose.

So you might be wondering what the Failsafe diet is....

The FAILSAFE diet is a diet designed to be free of additives, low in salicylates, amines and flavor enhancers. It's pretty much the blandest of the bland diets. I never said it was fun, but IT WORKS.

Sensitivities to food chemicals (IGG reactions) are pharmacological and dose-related (like the side effects of drugs), rather than immune-mediated (IGE) like allergies. This is why skin prick tests are usually useless for people who are experiencing these intolerances. The reactions can be immediate or delayed, which is why they are so tricky to detect. Believe me, it took me YEARS to figure out what I was reacting to! Meanwhile after undergoing extensive allergy testing, I had not one IGE type allergy, yet my body was responding to foods and certain personal care products as if I did.

Different people have dramatically different tolerance levels to salicylates, amines, glutamates, sulphites, food colourings and other additives, and sensitivity symptoms (intolerances), occur when a person’s tolerance levels are exceeded. Think of it like a bucket. If your bucket fills faster than your body can empty it, you get a reaction.

Reactions can vary from person to person. Some people don;t even notice reactions, while others can get some digestive discomfort and mild itching. Then there are those like myself so are lucky enough to be "super responders", where even a morsel of the offending chemical can cause a full on melt down.

The symptoms caused by food chemicals appear to be allergy-like which can make determining their true cause very confusing. Despite food chemical intolerance being more common than true allergy, a lack of knowledge about this syndrome means that the symptoms are rarely understood properly by the layperson or the medical practitioner. There are specific metabolic reasons for these symptoms.

To add insult to injury, the list of symptoms will make your head spin. Food chemical intolerances have the capacity to affect just about every single system in the human body, and at times, several at once.

There is a good amount of research out there that is now linking certain "mystery illnesses" to food chemicals, as in the case of Fibromyalgia and salicylates, and histamine intolerance with eczema, anxiety, IBS and a myriad of other mental illnesses. These chemicals have also been closely tied into Chronic Fatigue and Adrenal Fatigue syndromes.

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About Me

Hmmm where do I start? Let's see....my friends all affectionately refer to me as "Bubble Girl"! I am a fun loving chick, born in the North and raised in the South by the grace of God :)
I've pretty much been blacklisted by every doctor and allergist in South Florida LOL! When I walk in they cringe! They refer to me as the "green zebra". Apparently in medical school they label patients with weird mystery illnesses as "zebras". You see plenty of horses but not too many zebras. And I am a green one..imagine that! The unicorn of allergic patients! Some say mast cell disease, others say MCS, others say parasites/leaky gut, and others say limbic system imbalance, but who knows. Hell, it could be all of the above as far as I'm concerned!
Anyway, I've sadly gotten used to being Bubble Girl and I now try to find the humor in it all as often as I can. I haven't given up on finding a cure and one day being "normal" again (well normal for me anyway!). I love making new friends, so feel free to drop me a line. Even if you just want to rant and rave about how much it sucks to be sick. I'm always up for a round of bitching and moaning :)